In today’s modern, tech-driven world, there basically is an app for everything. So of course why wouldn’t there be a whole sector of app development devoted to health technology? Mobile Health, or mHealth, refers to medicine and public health services through mobile device usage and reinforcement and is one of the leading developments revolutionising the modern healthcare and social care industry.
According to Research and Markets’ report of the Mobile Health App Market Industry Trends, Opportunities and Forecasts to 2023, the market is estimated to grow from $28 billion U.S. dollars in 2018 to over $102 billion dollars by 2023. Here are 4 health technology mobile apps shaking up the social care and health care industry in 2018:
- For Mental Wellbeing: My Possible Self
The My Possible Self app is a personalized self-help tool that allows the user to analyze their feelings, thoughts, and behaviours by navigating through clinically proven simple learning modules to manage fear, anxiety and stress and tackle unhelpful thinking. Basically the app is similar to having a therapist in your pocket! Other functions of the app include the ability to track “Moments” in order to record how satisfied the user is in specific areas of their daily life as well as blog posts on basically anything about mental health you can think of.
2. For Health Care Providers and Patients: CarePassport
CarePassport describes themselves as a trusted healthcare app for patients to aggregate and access all their medical data, including medical images, lab results, dental records, clinical reports and more from different healthcare providers. Patients can consolidate their medical records from any healthcare provider, imaging CDs, apple watch, health kit, Fitbit, health forms, CDA Files, JPEG, PDF documents or any self reported medical records using the native app or CarePassport patient portal. CarePassport was recognized by Frost & Sullivan with the 2017 North American Visionary Innovation Leadership Award for its mobile-based, data-driven patient engagement solution that digitizes patient-clinician collaboration and supports more informed decision-making.
3. For Improving Your Quality of Sleep: Sleep Cycle
Sleep Cycle is an app is able to track the user’s pattern and quality of sleep through its two motion detection modes. The built-in microphone and accelerometer (which is placed on the bed next to the user) are used to analyze the user’s movements as they sleep. Sleep Cycle uses a wake up phase (30 minutes by default) that ends at the user’s desired alarm time. During this phase Sleep Cycle will monitor signals from the user’s body to wake them softly, when they are in the lightest possible sleep state. By using this method, the app is avoiding the user from interrupting the “wrong” sleep cycle stage, such as slow-wave (“deep”) sleep or REM (rapid eye movement, when dreaming occurs), which results in grogginess upon awakening.
4. For Quick Medical Advice: First Opinion
First Opinion is an app that provides medical assistance through a free messaging service that connects with a group of doctors available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. After filling out a profile, the user is then matched with a medical professional from anywhere around the world.
Tradebox Media are an award-winning software development agency based in Cardiff, UK.